Monthly Archives: August 2013

What I want is a reliable single-serve coffee-maker I can use on the road so that I can continue to enjoy the benefits of making my own coffee to my own taste. I took a while to research readily available units (as I failed to do when I bought my Keurig) and settled on a Bunn MyCafe as the van coffee-maker. The keurig was the only real competition, but unless the mini-Keurig was heavily discounted it was too expensive for a unit which was restricted to K-cups, while the Bunn, for just a little more, could handle K-cups, pods, and ground coffee (although I may pack a little pre-ground, I won’t be taking my coffee mill with me). So I wandered down to Cultured Coffee Bean, my local supplier of choice, to pick up more coffee and see what deal I could make for a Bunn MyCafe with four drawers (you swap out drawers to make particular types of coffee, and even plain hot water needs a drawer).

The answer was no deal at all, because Bunn in Canada doesn’t offer a bundle with all four drawers and charges an arm and a leg for the individual drawers. I could get a Bunn in the US for less than Cultured Coffee Bean’s dealer cost. Bunn Canada is not doing the Bunn line any favours – I suppose they are more interested in corporate sales than in individual consumers (Bunn should find a new Canadian distributor, or just ship from the US).

In the meantime, I still need a 12V fridge, and the best one appears to be a tiny unit made by Engel. That turned out not to be locally available in Canada, but might be available in New York State. I wanted to do another test run on the van, so I loaded up and set out across the border.

I left late, and didn’t reach the border until sunset. In the growing darkness I drove to Amherst, a few miles from Niagara Falls, and into the parking lot at Lowe’s, where I bought the Bunn at, according to the shelf label, $20 below MSRP. I also picked up a box of Green Mountain Breakfast Blend K-cups in order to try out the new machine.

But I had to sleep, and while I had intended to park at a nearby Wal-Mart (which as a matter of corporate policy allows overnight parking for RVs unless there’s a local ordnance or some other reason preventing it), I couldn’t face the prospect of going back on the road right away. I asked the checkout operator if it would be ok to park overnight. “I’ll have to ask my manager.” Fair enough, and she called the manager over quickly, and we repeated the question. “Hm. I’ll have to check with the store manager.” The assistant manager duly came by, and his response was “I don’t think there’s any problem, but … ” he had to check with his manager. Finally I got permission, and I’d like to express my thanks to all four individuals for their consideration. It would have been very easy for any one of them to have said no, but they took the time to consider it and pass it up the chain of command. I just wish Lowe’s would follow Wal-Mart’s lead and make it a policy to allow it where possible – I think they do a lot of business with RVers, as do other large stores such as Home Depot.

The following day I checked with West Marine, the store which might have carried the Engels unit I was interested in. Unfortunately, while they had Engels coolers in stock, they didn’t have Engels upright fridges (it’s a different mechanism, and a different orientation) and would have to order it, so I left disappointed, and figure on ordering the fridge while I’m in California – I can survive for a while without it. After a brief rummage through the nearby Harbour Freight store (always fun), a large lunch at Chipotle’s, and a couple of cups of coffee (heh!), I headed home.

I hit the border with almost no cash left, only to find that every border crossing back into Canada required a toll (very strange – enter the US for free, but pay to get out). Luckily I had enough for a non-commercial vehicle, so up to the booth I went, cash in hand — but the collector wanted more: “You’re a bus.” I explained that I was a non-commercial vehicle, an RV. “You’re a 10-passenger bus.” No, I said, I’m a 2-passenger RV. “How many seats you got?” Two, I said. “How many seats can you have?” I told him my insurance only allowed five. “Hmph.” He took my cash and let me drive across the bridge.

On the other side were customs booths, and a sign pointing off to the side marked ‘Buses & RVs’ so I headed in the indicated direction. Buses and RVs stood idling in front of me, so I took my place in line. Eventually an officer came over. “Why are you here?” I said there was a sign telling me to head in this direction. “You’re not a bus.” No, I said, I’m an RV. “No, you’re a passenger vehicle.” Apparently they were only interested in me as an RV if I was carrying people they had to check, and since I had my passport and wasn’t carrying paying passengers, I was neither a bus nor an RV for their purposes. The officer took my passport, asked a few questions, and after checking my passport inside the building, gave it back and sent me on my way. From now on, I expect the van to be either beast or fowl depending on how the other guy feels.

Oh, the coffee maker? Does a great job, but pulls so much power from the battery pack that the 3000W inverter complains about low voltage, sounding an annoying alarm. As soon as the coffee is made, the alarm shuts off, and everything – including the battery voltage – goes back to normal. The coffee’s good, takes a minute or two to make, and all is well on that front. I think I want a workspace to make food on, but that’s a topic for another day.

Starfest is an event hosted by the NYAA early in August of each year around a weekend close to new moon at a site close to Mount Forest, Ontario. Several hundred (at least!) amateur astronomers and their families show up, and some of the kids who attended with their parents in the eighties are now showing up with their own kids. It’s a great event, but for most attendees it involves spending a few nights under canvas, and that’s one of the motivations behind my van conversion – I don’t mind putting up a tent, but I certainly don’t love it, and my wife hates it to the extent that last year she refused to come.

While I’ve been dithering over design details and waiting for engine repairs I’ve also been acquiring things (new mount, new OTA, new astrocamera) which were appropriate to Starfest, as well as appliances (power inverters, a microwave, a drip coffee maker, an induction cooker, a propane stove) which could be tested there. This last Thursday I more or less threw everything into the van and headed off to see how everything worked together (and I consider myself to be one of the components in the mix – things can work perfectly together, and I may still feel uncomfortable with them.

Now, first of all, Starfest as an event was excellent. The skies weren’t cooperative, in the sense that we got only one all-nighter out of it. Thursday night it was cloudy, Friday night it rained before clearing up well after midnight, and Saturday night, the one clear night, was distressingly cold for August. The various daytime talks were good, though I missed a couple which I had wanted to catch because my internal clock was awry after I stayed up talking with friends late into the night. The vendors had lots of interesting stuff, and some of it was quite drool worthy – but I’ve been spending on the van recently, and spare cash is there only if I am delusional (I must be though, since I bought things, and had some difficulty remembering details when the bills came in).

I did run into problems with my electrical setup, though. The microwave is billed as a 700 W device. Which it is. Sort of. It delivers 700 watts to whatever food I am cooking, but it unfortunately draws well over 1000 watts from the wall socket, wasting the rest in heat, a turntable, and internal electronics. In consequence, my 1000W inverter shut down rather than supply the power, and I had no working microwave. On the other hand, I did have a 3000W inverter supplying modified-sine-wave power, so with some trepidation, I tried that. I say trepidation because modified sine wave power contains a lot of transient frequencies which can make electronics unhappy, but in this case the microwave seems to have been able to handle them (though time may reveal that the life of the micro has been reduced).

I had my hot oatmeal, but something was bubbling at the back of the van. It turned out that the micro had pulled the battery voltage low enough to trigger the EFOY fuel cell, which was merrily dumping power into the battery pack. Not a great concern, but something of a surprise, and rather unwelcome because the cooler was pumping along keeping my food and pills cold and drawing about as much power as the fuel cell was putting out. I can’t run the cooler from the battery pack because the EFOY can’t keep up – I need a more efficient fridge. That night I pulled the plug on the cooler, and eventually the EFOY got ahead of the point where the battery had started out. Every time I used the micro the EFOY lost ground, but a couple of hours running brought the battery pack back. Had I started from a truly fully charged point and never used the cooler, I might have survived the first couple of days without triggering the fuel cell at all.

I still needed to cook, but in my hurry to leave I had left the propane fuel behind, and given the power problem (I still needed to cool my food and meds during the heat of the day), I was reluctant to even try the induction cooker (and I still haven’t). I called Daniella at home, and she brought up a small bottle of propane when she came up on Friday afternoon. After that, the propane stove worked just fine for cooking purposes,and I’ll happily use it in future outings.

The only other disappointment was again due to my haste in leaving – I came up with only one of the counterweights for my scope, having fooled myself into believing everything was balanced when in fact I had not released the clutch properly on the RA axis. The scope was therefore unbalanced in operation and I decided to limit the usage as much as possible. I did wind up learning more about my new mount, though, and I count that as a plus – and as an added bonus I got to look through a number of other people’s scopes, including a monster made by Normand Fullum’s company (36″ f/3.5. Wow!)

There are a number of changes to make (real fridge, designed for 12V operations, just as one example) but all in all I happy with the setup and I think I could leave for the Great California Trip anytime (but I’ll see how much more I can fix up before we actually leave).